I took a week off from blogging last week for a number of reasons.  One was that I was having trouble getting my mind around topics.  Another was being in sort of a strange set of moods that have made concentration rather difficult.  Yet again, and probably the root cause of the other two is either spending large amounts of time with someone (no time to write) or no time at all (no motivation to write).  In any event, I think that I have some balance back.

Those of you that read this regular series know that I am from Hackett, Arkansas, just a mile or so from the Oklahoma border, and just about 10 miles south of the Arkansas River.  It was a rural sort of place that did not particularly appreciate education, and just zoom onto my previous posts to understand a bit about it.

Dad was sort of obsessive about the lawn.  We had a big yard, the front being the largest and the back second, with the sides being somewhat smaller but still large by most standards.  The problem was that we had lots of large trees.  In the front were two post oaks, a hackberry (that was hollow at the bottom), a mockernut hickory (one with really sweet nuts, unlike many mockernuts), and a papershell pecan.

The side on the south had a walnut tree that I planted, and the back had two large walnut trees.  The side on the north had a very tall pine and a redbud tree.  All of that shade made it sort of hard to grow grass.

I took a week off from blogging last week for a number of reasons.  One was that I was having trouble getting my mind around topics.  Another was being in sort of a strange set of moods that have made concentration rather difficult.  Yet again, and probably the root cause of the other two is either spending large amounts of time with someone (no time to write) or no time at all (no motivation to write).  In any event, I think that I have some balance back.

I got tired of writing about carbon so we shall move on to nitrogen.  With an atomic number (Z) of 7, it is the element after carbon.  Nitrogen is another of the few elements that ordinary people encounter on a daily basis, because it comprises around 78% of the atmosphere of the earth.

There are two stable isotopes of nitrogen, the very common ¹⁴N (99.64%), the rest being ¹⁵N.  Both of these isotopes are formed in larger stars by stellar nucleosynthesis.  Nitrogen is peculiar in that it is one of only five nucleides that are stable with both an odd number of protons and neutrons.  It is really unusual in that ¹⁴N is by far the most common isotope of nitrogen.

One of the most complicated bands in many ways is the British band Jethro Tull.  They are complicated in their music, extremely complicated in their personnel, and almost mind bogglingly complicated in insofar as why I adore a limited set of their work and either care not a fig or actually dislike the rest.  I have such a love/hate relationship for any other band.

I do not understand why I feel this way, but I do.  At their best, they are superb.  When they are a bit off they are still better than most bands, but the material that I dislike is just awful, at least in my view.

This is why it has taken me so long to get started with this series.  I generally try to write about things that I have unambiguous feelings, usually bands that I really like.  Sometimes I write about horrible acts, like Ray Stevens, who really never did anything of real merit.  But to write about a band that can move me greatly with some material and with other material make me say, “What IS that?” is quite different.  Please bear with me!

Those of you that read this regular series know that I am from Hackett, Arkansas, just a mile or so from the Oklahoma border, and just about 10 miles south of the Arkansas River.  It was a rural sort of place that did not particularly appreciate education, and just zoom onto my previous posts to understand a bit about it.

From the 1880s to the Great Depression Hackett was a booming town.  Coal drove the economy, but there was significant agriculture as well.  Coal was king, though.  Hackett coal is ideal for making coke, basically the coal counterpart of charcoal.  Coke was and still is used in enormous quantities to produce steel, and during The Gilded Age the steel mills were running at capacity.

Not just any coal will make suitable coke.  The particular kind of bituminous coal found at Hackett is ideal for coking and hundreds of men mined it there.  There were rail lines to carry it away and it found its way up north to the steel mills.

Last time we finished our discussion of diamond, and now we move to what is pretty incorrectly called amorphous carbon.  Truly amorphous materials. like glass, have no true crystal structure (although there may be some local microstructures) that repeats regularly.

When used in the sense of carbon, only recently produced thin films of carbon are truly amorphous.  These are of research interest for the most part, although I would be quite surprised if practical uses are not found for them before long.

We shall discuss forms of carbon traditionally called amorphous even though they are not truly amorphous.  These include some of the most commonly encountered forms of carbon, and almost everyone has seen and touched at least a few examples.

NCIS is really a good TeeVee program.  The writing is realistic, the characters well developed, and the mysteries usually pretty good, often with last minute twists.  Of all of the characters, Gibbs (played with aplomb by Mark Harmon) is by far the most complex.

This piece is not intended to be a history of the show, but rather my take on the personality of the character.  Various scenes that I remember may be used to illustrate my points, but once again this is more of a character analysis of Gibbs than a narrative of the program.

First and foremost, Gibbs is damaged goods.  He was always in trouble when he was a kid, often rescued by his father, Jackson (played by the wonderful Ralph Waite).  Some of these incidents are told in flashback, and the young Gibbs is played by Sean Harmon, Mark Harmon’s son by Pam Dawber.

Those of you that read this regular series know that I am from Hackett, Arkansas, just a mile or so from the Oklahoma border, and just about 10 miles south of the Arkansas River.  It was a rural sort of place that did not particularly appreciate education, and just zoom onto my previous posts to understand a bit about it.

My maternal grandmum married John Mackey, a really nice man who had been a doughboy during World War I.  She had been widowed for many years (my grandfather died years before I was born) and John had been married briefly decades before, so he was essentially a bachelor.

John had a little candy store on Main Street in Hackett where he sold candy, cold soft drinks, flashlight batteries, and sundries.  He never made any money with the store because he gave so much stuff away to kids (like me).  He lived in the back of the store until he married my grandmum.  He had a little pension for serving in World War I and also a black lung pension for being a coal miner for years.

The store was the gathering place for the old men in town.  He had an awning over the storefront and several benches and chairs under it.  He also had chairs and tables inside for winter and he had a pot bellied coal stove in the store.  At the time coal was readily available for the consumer market in Hackett.

Last time we started talking about the allotropes of carbon, finished graphite and began with diamond.  Tonight we shall continue the diamond saga and maybe move to a third common allotrope.

Last week I was having some connectivity problems and, quite frankly, was ill with a bad cold, so I just did not feel much like writing.  I am better (much) this week and my computer seems to be functioning within design parameters.

Since the part that I wrote about diamond was so short last time, I shall paraphrase it as the start of this piece.  That way you do not have to hit the link to get up to speed.

I apologize for being absent last week.  I had a nasty cold and started on this very piece but just did not have the energy to finish it.

I am still doing background on the series about Jethro Tull, but and not ready to start writing the piece yet.  They were much more complicated insofar as the band lineup goes than most of the bands about which I have written, so it is taking some time.

Tonight we are going to look at who I consider to be the greatest rock and roll bass player who ever drew breath, Thunderfingers, aka The Ox.  But he was much more than a great bass player.  He was outstanding on brass instruments, and much of the early work by The Who has a lot of French horn in it.

He was also an accomplished songwriter and singer, and many of his songs were performed by The Who.  Songwriting is much more lucrative than merely performing, so he was always to get more of his songs on records.

Those of you that read this regular series know that I am from Hackett, Arkansas, just a mile or so from the Oklahoma border, and just about 10 miles south of the Arkansas River.  It was a rural sort of place that did not particularly appreciate education, and just zoom onto my previous posts to understand a bit about it.

I have written about Ma’s garden before and shall not repeat that.  If you want to read them, you can look here, here, and here.  What I want to talk about tonight is that I have begun harvesting from my own garden recently, and just Monday got the first large tomatoes and purple hull peas.  I had been collecting cucumbers for a while.

I garden in a rather unconventional style.  For starters, I HATE to hoe and will go to great lengths to avoid it.  I do not mind tilling, but my soil was still nice and loose this year and did not even have to do that.  At least with tilling, you do it once and are finished for the year.

I had a bit of trouble getting the garden started this year because it was wet in the spring (not as bad as last year).  I finally did get it in, though, and my philosophy has changed considerably since I first started gardening living alone.